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Growing Salt crystals


aommaster

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  • 1 month later...

Hey guys I just found this board.

 

I just saw your post about making Copper sulphate and I wanted to try it myself.

 

However, I am not very well stocked in my lab, and by "lab" I mean bedroom.

 

I am planning on sanding down Enameled copper magnet wire and twisting it into coils. Then I will use Aquarium "pH down"(sulfuric acid) along with water and doing the electrolysis with a printer power supply (24v 3.7A). I will then use a coffee filter to remove the copper sulphate then let it dry.

 

Do you think it will work?

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well... for a start, don`t sand down the wire, your making work for yourself, burm the shellac coating off instead and let your wire get RED HOT for a minute, that way you`ll be sure all the carbon has gone from the shellac and have a good coating of copper oxide (it reacts faster than plain copper).

the only other problem I can see, it that the wire being so thin, it wont last long in the acid during electrolysis, but iff you`re patient and don`t mind replacing them regularly, there`s no reason at all why it shouldn`t work :)

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What color is copper oxide? I have a ton of copper coils from old coil gun projects but when I bring a flame to them they turn gray. I remember a copper penny turning gray when I heated it once to melt the zinc out.

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the grey is copper oxide, it`s when the copper get sufficiently hot enough to react to the oxygen in the air and combine with it.

zinc from a copper penny? that sounds like a lot of hard work I must say!

wouldn`t it be a much easier to take appart a simple Alkaline battery like a durracel or Energiser and just pull the pure zinc core out of the middle? (it looks like a nail) ;)

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